The Latest: 3rd Indianapolis-area district cancels classes

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Suburban Indianapolis police were searching Thursday from an unknown person who posted threats on Facebook and prompted two school districts to cancel classes for more than 7,000 students on their last day before winter break.A rash of email and phone threats of violence hit schools from New Jersey to Florida to Texas on Thursday, but most were deemed to be hoaxes and schools opened. Before the online threats that led to cancellations were posted, Danville Community High School was on alert due to separate incidents of threats by students, both of whom were arrested early Thursday.

A classmate overheard a 14-year-old freshman saying on Tuesday that he was “going to get a gun and shoot the place up,” according to Danville Police Chief William Wright. Plainfield police said that the threat directly mentioned “Plainfield High School students.” Danville and Plainfield police are trying to find the third person and Wright said the school closings were “a precautionary measure while we’re trying to determine if the threat is credible.” FBI Special Agent Wendy Osborne said the federal agency was assisting with the investigation of the threats. School districts in Houston, Dallas, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Miami all decided on Thursday that emailed threats were not credible, and were similar to ones sent to schools in New York City and Los Angeles earlier this week. The Indiana threats appeared to be different from the hoax emails sent to the larger school districts elsewhere in the country, Danville Community School Corporation Superintendent Tracy Shafer told Reuters.

In a move criticized by some law enforcement officials as an overreaction, officials in Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school district, canceled classes for 640,000 public school students on Tuesday over a threatened attack with bombs and guns that was later deemed a hoax.